It did not take long for freshman Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-S.F., to get comfortable with the ways of Sacramento.

The former city supervisor quickly acquired a fancy title (assistant speaker pro tem), a nice office and an appreciation for often strange ways "democracy" is practiced in the Assembly.

Yee, for example, takes exception to an editorial writer's suggestion that state legislators are neglecting their duty -- or avoiding accountability -- when they fail to vote. (Yee was criticized on this page for missing an April 8 vote on AB216, a proposed alcohol tax to fund recovery centers and education programs for teens). Last week, Yee said nonvoting must be viewed in the context of "the culture" of the Assembly.

"Let me give you an analogy: This is like when I was a child psychologist, we did cross-cultural psychological research," Yee said, explaining that he found that westerners neither understood nor appreciated certain child-rearing practices in Asian cultures. "What you are trying to do is impose your rules, your understanding of things, into a new situation."

In the culture of the Assembly, Yee said, nonvoting is a way of voting "no" while preserving the "collegial atmosphere."

"There are times when you do want to vote 'no' on something but you don't want to slap the author in the face," he explained.

A nonvote, he added, can be "a signal" that a lawmaker likes the concept of a bill but has concerns about certain provisions -- and might be willing to vote for it at a later date.

"One of the things that is different from here and San Francisco," Yee said,

"is that here, when something is dead, it's never dead."

Yee has also been at the center of another practice that folks unfamiliar with the Assembly "culture" might regard as undemocratic: the swapping of committee members to achieve a desired result on a particular bill.

On June 30, Yee cast the deciding voted against SB103, a bill to extend the sales tax to Internet subsidiaries of book sellers such as Borders and Barnes and Noble. Yee's vote incurred the wrath of some independent bookstores and was criticized on this page.

Two days later, SB103 came up for reconsideration in the Committee on Jobs, Economic Development and the Economy. Yee was replaced for the day by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-L.A., who voted for the bill. And it passed.

Yee said he did not ask to be taken off the committee for the day. He was told.

It was, he said, the decision of Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, who wanted the bill passed.

"I was opposed to the bill, I was going to be opposed to the bill, I wasn't going to change my mind," Yee said.

Which raises the question: If Yee genuinely believed that the Internet tax was bad public policy -- at one point, he suggested it would make bookstores reluctant to locate in California -- why didn't he object to being replaced on the committee? Does he regard such member-swapping as appropriate?

"I am not going to comment on that," Yee said. "All I'm going to say is the speaker of the Assembly has certain rights, privileges and power."

A spokeswoman for Wesson insisted Friday that the speaker does not make temporary committee appointments to achieve a particular outcome. She said Yee "asked to be replaced" for the day.

But committee-rigging is a time-honored practice in the Assembly.

By most accounts, Wesson does less member-swapping than some of his predecessors, particularly Willie Brown. For example, Wesson resisted pressure from some consumer advocates to replace industry-friendly members of the Banking and Finance Committee who were clearly predisposed to vote against Sen.

Still, Wesson does appear to have come up with a creative power-wielding device by leaving one permanent Democratic vacancy this session on four key committees: Appropriations, Elections, Judiciary and Revenue and Taxation. These vacancies give Wesson the ability to tilt the committee's composition on any given day.

"Herb's designated hitters," quipped one senator, shaking his head at the "culture" of the Assembly.